Vermont Legalizes Recreational Marijuana, What’s Next for NY?

The legalization or recreational marijuana has been a hot topic around the Capital Region lately, especially with many of our neighboring states being a few steps ahead of us, but could New York be next?

Yesterday a pretty historic bill was passed in Vermont when their Gov. Phil Scott privately signed a marijuana bill into law making Vermont the first state to legalize recreational marijuana legislatively.

You may remember that it wasn't too long ago that Massachusetts legalized recreational marijuana even though you can't technically buy it until July of this year. Now New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy is campaigning to legalize it saying it could net $300 million in revenue for the state. And here we are in New York smacked up against two possibly three states where it is or could be legal so how does that impact us?

Well, Gov. Cuomo has proposed a study to attempt to figure out just that. According to NBC New York in his 2018 budget plan he;

Proposed the Department of Health study the effects that legalizing the drug would have on the state’s health, economy and criminal justice system. The study would also look at the impacts of marijuana being legalized for recreational use in neighboring states.

Which seems to be a pretty big push forward for the NY Governor considering just a year ago he told the NY Post that "I, as of this date, I am unconvinced on recreational marijuana."

I will reiterate this again, I think it would be silly of him to sit on this one, based on a purely economical standpoint. NBC News/ Wall Street released a poll earlier this month that shows that that 60%, a solid majority of Americans, support legalizing the drug for recreational use. Which means that people are willing to pay for it, taxed! So why wouldn't you want to take advantage of that added income for the state?